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Friday, July 03, 2009

I just finished reading "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. He details the ways that mega-corporations like Bechtel and Haliburton work in lockstep with the U.S. government, the World Bank, and the IMF to control developing countries via enormous debt for mega-projects that are built by these companies and that benefit only a small segment of the populations.

I just finished reading "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. He details the ways that mega-corporations like Bechtel and Haliburton work in lockstep with the U.S. government, the World Bank, and the IMF to control developing countries via enormous debt for mega-projects that are built by these companies and that benefit only a small segment of the populations.

I guess my radar was way up when I saw a scant two-sentence article in the SF Chronicle this week, saying Kyrgyzstan had granted the US an extension on our airbase in their country after telling us to leave a few months ago. Kyrgyzstan? It's one of those "new" countries from the former Soviet Union that most Americans (like myself) have not added to our mental globes.

I looked it up on Wikipedia and found that sure enough it is one of the poorest countries in that neighborhood. Also this article from the Encyclopedia of Nations, says the IMF is very involved in propping up its currency.

Nevertheless, in this case Kyrgyzstan may have found a product to sell to the highest bidder and maybe even reduce some of their debt. Seems that Russia recently gave them 1.3 billion to evict the U.S. The New York Times did a much better job than our Chronicle and recounted some details of what Kyrgyzstan got from the U.S. - which uses this base extensively in our war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. I imagine that author John Perkins could rattle off several indicators that point to even more back-story on what leverage we used to get this agreement.